simple difficult life – it is a poetic means. This site is about various aspects of life.

Beware of people who don’t like animals

I am afraid of such people like Nikitin from Chekhov’s short story “The Teacher of Literature”. He was visiting the house in which his beloved girl lived. He was visiting the house in which everything pleased him but animals. Nikitin mounted the horse just because he was courting Masha. He got on the horse but he knew nothing about horses. “He only felt that his position (on horse) was strained and unnatural.” He had never been interested in driving horses. “(…) it made absolutely no difference to him whether he trotted or galloped (…).”

Nikitin was disturbed by the view of cat laying curled up, purring near Masha. He also felt irritation against the cat who stretched and arched its back.

Both men and animals have their habits. Som, a good-natured dog, “had the habit of putting his head on people’s knees at dinner and messing their trousers with saliva”. Because of that custom, Nikitin could not endure Som. He tried to hit the dog with a knife-handle or to flip him on the nose.

Abreaction of fail to win the argument forced Nikitin to cry to dog.

As the dowry, Nikitin received a two-storied house, twenty thousand roubles and a piece of waste land. But he was not perfectly happy because of animals. He perceived cats and dogs as a nasty part of his wife’s dowry.

It only took some time for people to discover that Nikitin would be treating badly not just animals but even close person.